The courtship dance of the peacock spider

These tiny jumping spiders are surprisingly cute up close, and have some really beautiful coloring. But I can't help but hear the narration from Rob's video of the common douche playing in my head during parts of this.

Notice how fast these guys are? Even on film they simply disappear between frames. They move so fast they’re invisible to the naked eye – just like The Flash! It’s mostly done with hydraulics: valves are pre-set in the joints and then, when it’s time to make the planned move a bladder in the tummy is squeezed to zip off at the speed of sound. There’s another spider that can vibrate into invisibility in place in its web. That’s OK against those with only two eyes but their nemesis Hunting Wasp has too many eyes to fool that way: at any given moment at least a couple of dozen eyes will be firing.

Wow, what a stunning display! The mating dance can be such a pretty thing. Sadly, though, this isn’t always so. (Take your pick of examples.) I nearly lost my lunch yesterday, sitting in the garden, *minding my own business,* when these two mosquitoes dropped down in front of me, anus to anus, obviously drunk, woozy and weaving through the air, shameless in their disgusting, unwelcome, public display of reproduction. Vile little beasts without a thought beyond sex, and sucking blood. Enough to make a girl long for the days of municipal malathion treatments. (Actually, no. Herbal Armor does the trick, I’ve just yet to stock up for the swarm season that is, apparently, immediately upon us.)